EISA (Click here) released the name of the EISA award winners. Sony won three prices in the following categories:
Best European SLR Camera: Sony A57
Best European Advanced Compact Camera: Sony RX100.
Best European Travel Camera: Sony HX20v
P.S.: RX100 still sells like hotcakes at Amazon US (ranking here) and Amazon DE (ranking here).
The Hacker “someone” released the first Sony A55 hack! More info at EosHD forum: “The patcher app is able to overcome the [shoplink 3617]A55[/shoplink] firmware encryption and is the basis for adding bitrate patches and new menu options later on. The [shoplink 3003]NEX 5[/shoplink] patcher I also believe is coming later.”
If the hacker managed to hack the [shoplink 3617]A55[/shoplink] than I am sure he will soon do it with the A65 and A77 too. And maybe also with the future A99!
UPDATE: EosHD is collecting the donations for the hacker at http://www.nex-hack.com/index.php/forum/12-hacking-project-general/
Sony NEX hack by Someone 1.00 from Andrew Reid on Vimeo.
EosHD posted the video you see here on top to explain the possible future NEX camera hack. The author (and not the hacker!) of EosHD speculates that “46Mbit on the older NEX 5 without too much trouble and it is still early days yet, so we could see stuff like intra-frame recording and improvements to HDMI out, or even 4:2:2 colour in MP4 mode and higher resolutions.”
Please don’t get too exited about this now. It’s all speculation and imagination now. Let’s see if the hacker group will succeed in releasing a real hacked firmware with lots of new features. I would be certainly happy because this means we would not have to wait for Sony to improve our NEX (and maybe SLT) cameras. And don’t forget that APP support is coming wih the next NEX camera…this is also a good news :)
RX100 review by John Sison
Pimping out the RX100 at Luminous Landscape.
RX100 review at DPS.
New RX100 video by Outbackphoto.
Gizmodo: “This is a camera that 90% of the population can pull out of a pocket on a whim to fire off a few beautiful shots without much trouble. Still, this is not a camera for everyone.”
Special Sony RX100 Tahoe photo gallery posted at DCresource.
Rx100 experience part on at Soundimagesplus.
A “protein” based sensor patent at Egami (Translation here).
Sony NEX-7 for street photography at TheF8blog.
RX100 rankings at Amazon US (Click here to see the ranking), Amazon UK and Amazon Germany.
You can buy the lens by clicking those direct search links: RX100 at [shopcountry 13014].
And don’t forget that the super sexy RX100 Gariz case is already available in [shoplink 13071 ebay]Black on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and in [shoplink 13073 ebay]Brown on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]!
For some unknown reason Sony has slowed down the work on the firmware updates of cameras like the NEX-7 and A77. It’s just my guess but I think that Sony engineers were now focused on the development of the new NEX-5R and NEX-6 cameras. But this is not the way to go Sony! We all trusted you when buying our Sony SLT or NEX that you would keep fixing and improving our (sometimes very expensive) cameras. If you make us happy you will earn trust and we will spend even more money into the system!
The recent [shoplink 13183 ebay]Canon 7D[/shoplink] firmware upgrade shows how Canon did take care of the user requests. A nice article about the Canon lesson has been posted by David Kilpatrick. It’s a must read for all Sony managers! I hope the good SLT and NEX sales success will now convince the Sony managers that we need a long time customer support.
If you download the Sony Q1 financial report (.pdf) you will see that Sony is still loosing money (particularly in the TV business). But there is one good news. They are no writing Black results in the Imaging division. Sony writes:
“Sales increased 7.6% year-on-year (a 12% increase on a constant currency basis) to 193.8 billion yen (2,453 million U.S. dollars). This increase was primarily due to a significant increase in sales of interchangeable single lens cameras reflecting higher demand…”
That Sony is doing money with the NEX cameras isn’t a surprise for anyone. But they would do even better if they had an larger E-mount lens range. Anyway those results may will start again the DSLR/SLT versus Mirrorless discussion. Some of you think they should stay into both systems, some of you think that Mirrorless only is where they should focus their resources…
At JimBuchananSpace you can find the pictures and description of the new NEX-7 Palm Grip. Smart Idea!
Chris Townsend posted his personal NEX-7 review: “Is the Sony NEX 7 the best camera for backpacking and hiking? I don’t know. It must be one of the best though, given the low weight and bulk and high image quality. It’s definitely a camera for photographers who want the best results and who are likely to make large prints or have images published.”
Zeiss Distagon T* 15mm f/2.8 vs Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom and Samyang 14mm f/2.8 comparison (also on a NEX-7) at 3Dkraft.
Sony NEX-7 price check at [shopcountry 8454]. Zeiss 24mm in Stock status check at [shopcountry 8450].
A weird thing is that Amazon says the Zeiss lens has still not been released… :)
